Bouncing back from a negative review

So your business has had a negative review... and life is over right? You'll never sell another product again. Everyone will think you're a failure. Your business will fold. You'll lose your house, your family and all your worldly possessions. You'll never find work again. You may as well just give up now and go to live alone in a dark cave, far away from the rest of humanity.

Ok, stop.

Yes, customer reviews are incredibly important. Yes, research shows that they have a massive impact on your business. And no, it's not nice to discover that not everyone thinks you're doing a good job. But a negative review doesn't have to spell disaster – in fact, if you deal with it in the right way, it can actually benefit your business.

But the important thing is to make sure you know how best to respond to a negative review.

The temptation is to either bury your head in the sand or go on the defensive. Don't. It's never a good idea to respond when you're upset as you will likely come across as angry, unprofessional and in some cases, downright abusive.

You need to respond – ignoring a poor review is almost as bad as dealing with it badly.

With this in mind, you need to give yourself time to calm down so that any negative reviews are approached in a calm, professional manner. You need to let the customer know that you have listened and taken their opinion on board. Even if their claims are outlandish, you should never point fingers. The customer is always right (even if they aren't!) so responding in a positive and friendly manner lets them – and other people – know that your business cares about, and respects its customers.

Apologies are all very well but do they really help the customer? When dealing with a negative review, it's important to offer a solution as well as an apology.

Show your customers that you empathise with their situation and will do what it takes to rectify the problem. Something didn't work? Offer to fix it or replace it. Let down by poor customer service? Promise that the incident will be thoroughly looked into and further staff training will be arranged.

Ultimately, if you prove that your customers' happiness is your priority, people will respect your efforts and give you a second chance.

There is nothing worse than calling a customer service line and being kept on hold for hours with nothing but muzak and an automated voice telling you that 'your call is important to us'. In the same way, no-one wants to see a response online that sounds like it's been generated by an automatic bot.

Write to them like a human being – leave out the jargon and slogans, use plain English and be genuine! Treat them like a real person and try to build rapport, and it's likely they'll do the same back.

A poor review can be turned into an opportunity to tell people about your business's good reputation.

For example, if someone comments that a product didn't meet their expectations, your response could be something like, “We're sorry you weren't happy with our product. We've been selling said product for many years and most of our customers have commented on how much they like it. We apologise that in this case, we didn't meet your expectations.”

Always respond to an online review online. Not only does this mean that you are addressing the issue with the original poster, but others can see that you have responded in a professional and positive manner.

However, there may be certain severe instances where the issue shouldn't try to be resolved purely via online channels. In some cases you need to speak to the person face-to-face or over the telephone. For example, you should never ask for personal information when responding to a critical review. If you have a customer service line or email, ask the customer to contact you so that you can then start a dialogue.

Once you have responded to your customer's negative review and solved the issue, make sure it's standard practice to ask them for an updated review. In many cases, people can simply delete their original critical post; others may write an update explaining what was done to rectify the problem and how they now feel about the business.

It doesn't take much for you to send them a message reading, “We really appreciate your feedback and would love it if others are able to hear about what we did to resolve your issue. Would you mind updating your review with your thoughts on our efforts?”

Sadly, you're never going to make everyone happy, no matter how hard you try. If you are consistently getting negative reviews, there is very likely a serious issue with your business practices, but if, like most of us, you get the odd poor review here and there, try not to be disheartened. Instead, consider it an opportunity to change that person's mind and demonstrate your fantastic customer care and service.